The Case for Dirty Talk: How to Say What You Mean in Bed

The three things you should be doing with your mouth during sex.

By
Cindy Gallop

Jan 15, 2015

From Friday, January 9 through Friday, January 16, ELLE.com is doing a deep dive into the world of female sexuality—from the perils of being a 24-year-old virgin in New York City to a beginner's guide to exhibitionism to the steamiest scenes in film history. Is it getting hot in here? Or is it just us?

I am 54 years old, but I usually date men in their twenties. That's how I became aware, about seven or eight years ago, that today's freedom of access to hardcore porn online combined with society's reluctance to talk openly and honestly about sex has resulted in porn becoming sex education by default. Six years ago, I launched MakeLoveNotPorn.com, where we're pro sex, pro porn, and pro knowing the difference. I also gave a somewhat notorious TED talk on the topic:

The four-minute spot went viral and thousands of people responded, making it clear that we had tapped into a huge global issue in need of a bigger solution. Two years ago, co-founders Oonie Chase, Corey Innis, MadamCurator Sarah Beall, and I launched MakeLoveNotPorn.tv, a user-generated, crowdsourced, video-sharing platform that celebrates #realworldsex complete with a revenue-sharing business model for contributors, or, as we call them, MakeLoveNotPornstars. Our mission is simple: to make it easier for everyone to talk about sex—both publicly and privately.

That said, MakeLoveNotPorn was an accident: I didn't consciously set out to do what my team and I are now doing. But it's literally the startup the world was begging for. I'm also equipped to make it work: I've spent 30 years working in the business of communication, and I know that everything great in business (and life) is a product of great communication. And sex is no different! Here, my top three rules to getting what you want while getting down:

1. Talk during sex.

Let's face it: We all get vulnerable when we get naked. Sexual egos are fragile, which is why we can find it bizarrely difficult to talk about sex with the people we're actually having it with. We worry that if we say anything at all about what's going on, or comment on the action in any way whatsoever, that we might put our partner off, hurt their feelings, derail the encounter—even derail the whole relationship.

At the same time, we want to please our partner, and we want to be "good in bed." This is where porn tropes too often come into play. Because in the absence of communication, we often latch on to cues about how to give someone a good time from anywhere we can. Not the greatest idea, really.

Every sexual partner you will ever have is different; what your last partner loved may not be what turns the next partner on; and part of the fun of sex is mutual exploration. Obviously, at a baseline level, talking during sex is about consent: making sure everyone is comfortable and happy with everything that's going on. But talking during sex is also reassuring: it's how you know that everyone is enjoying themselves. Plus, talking during sex is fun! This is when you share intimacies, find things out about each other, or simply have a laugh. And why not? Let's face it: Sex is often (enjoyably) awkward, ridiculous, and screamingly funny.

2. Invent your own language:

We all have sex. We all enjoy it. But as I've said, we don't tend to talk about it.

As a result, we don't have a socially acceptable, socially shareable vocabulary for sex in the real world—one that everyone is comfortable using both in general, public discussion, and as a way of articulating how much you enjoy what goes on in your intimate personal relationships and what you'd like to do. The language of porn has rushed in to fill that gap. This isn't ideal— especially because, unsurprisingly, the language of porn is predominantly generated by men.

The person who coined the term 'finger blasting' didn't have a vagina. Because, well, if you have a vagina, that term automatically makes you wince and want to cross your legs. And while words like 'bitch', 'whore,' and 'slut' can be turn-ons during mutually agreed-upon dirty talk sessions, to be addressed as such the very first time you get naked with someone can have quite the opposite effect. At MakeLoveNotPorn we're building a new vocabulary for #realworldsex: We tag our videos with terms like 'juicy,' 'yummy,' 'succulent,' and 'saucy;' our search term for 'oral' is 'downtown.'

We're doing this because we'd love our members to take this language and use it beyond our platform. You can use this language to talk publicly about sex without feeling embarrassed about what's coming out of your mouth. And it's always evolving: We ask the MLNP community to tell us what language they use to celebrate and communicate around #realworldsex in their own individual way.

I recommend taking this approach and applying it to your own sex life. What are your own descriptors for what you love doing? How do you like to express yourself verbally in bed? There are no rules. Talking dirty doesn't have to be dirty in the conventional sense. Invent your own language and have fun with it.

3. Say what you really think:

The key to great sex communication is honesty. I particularly mean honesty in a positive sense (but, obviously, you should be honest about anything you're not enjoying or don't like). We can focus so much on our own insecurities in bed that we don't verbally express enough appreciation of our partner.

For example, one of my personal bugbears is that we don't tell men often enough how beautiful they are. And by that I mean literally using the term 'beautiful.' Men's bodies are just as beautiful as women's, and porn does men a disservice by making them think that sex is entirely dick-centric. Great sex is about appreciating, enjoying, and being aroused by every single part of your partner's body, and having that reciprocated. I make a point of telling the men I have sex with how beautiful I find them, what great bodies they have, and how much I love looking at, touching, and appreciating them. It's clear from their reactions that they don't hear those things very often, if at all.

So if you're thinking, "Ohmygod, you're absolutely gorgeous, and I can't believe I'm lucky enough to be here naked with you," say it. If you're thinking, "The way your hair curls at the nape of your neck is really cute," say it. If you're thinking, "Nobody's ever done that to me before, and I love it," say it. If you're thinking, "Right now I couldn't be happier," say that, too.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
ELLE participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.